Role of Committed Minorities in Times of Crisis

We use a Cooperative Decision Making (CDM) model to study the effect of committed minorities on group behavior in time of crisis. The CDM model has been shown to generate consensus through a phase-transition process that at criticality establishes long-range correlations among the individuals within a model society. In a condition of high consensus, the correlation function vanishes, thereby making the network recover the ordinary locality condition. However, this state is not permanent and times of crisis occur when there is an ambiguity concerning a given social issue. The correlation function within the cooperative system becomes similarly extended as it is observed at criticality. This combination of independence (free will) and long-range correlation makes it possible for very small but committed minorities to produce substantial changes in social consensus

The Crisis of the Young African American Male and the Criminal Justice System

African Americans are more likely to be victimized by crime and also to be under criminal justice supervision. This paper explores the current status of African-American males within the criminal justice system, assesses the factors that have created high levels of criminal justice control, and provides policy recommendations

A New Generation of Social Change

Outlines the foundation's strategies for addressing social justice issues for the next generation, including access to education, economic fairness and opportunity, freedom of expression, natural resources and sustainable development, and human rights

Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice

Challenging assumptions of the enlargement literature : the impact of the EU on human and minority rights in Macedonia

This article argues that from the very start of the transition process in Macedonia, a fusion of concerns about security and democratisation locked local nationalist elites and international organisations intoa political dynamic that prioritised security over democratisation. This dynamic resulted in little progress in the implementation of human and minority rights until 2009, despite heavy EU involvement in Macedonia after the internal warfare of 2001. The effects of this informally institutionalised relationship have been overlooked by scholarship on EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe, which has made generalisations based on assumptions relevant to the democratisation of countries in Eastern Europe, but not the Western Balkans

Is militant Islamism a busted flush in Indonesia?

In the late 1990s, Indonesia - the world’s most populous Muslim nation - began a transition from authoritarian rule. At the time, many commentators expressed concern about the security threat posed by militant Islamist extremists in the wake of Suharto’s downfall. Initially, Indonesia did witness a proliferation of Islamist paramilitary groups and a heightened security environment. Yet, in the decade and more since then, the dire threat predictions have largely failed to materialize. In fact, Indonesia today in coordination with international partners has reduced its potential climate of threat at least strategically. This outcome raises some interesting questions. First, has Indonesia really contained its paramilitary/extremist threat? Secondly, if so, how and what lessons, if any, can we draw from this? The following paper examines the ways in which Indonesia’s security concerns have actually diminished.Publisher PD